ITV On The Ropes
Michael Grade blames ITV's failures on a cultural conflict, but the Jiggy Pig affair surely indicates a more serious malaise.
When Michael Grade joined ITV in January, he cast himself as "the industry godfather" whom viewers could believe in. Ten months on, his honeymoon period is over. When Grade commissioned Deloitte in March to probe serious lapses in the broadcaster's premium-rate phone-ins, he cannot have realised the gravity of what would be uncovered.
Deloitte found that some £7.8m had been taken from viewers under false pretences, with perhaps the worst offender being Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, which invited viewers to text in and win the chance of riding the "Jiggy Pig" – a giant mechanical pig that spewed out cash. They weren't told that only entrants living within an hour's travel would be considered.
Asked in an interview for his definition of fraud, Grade replied that he couldn't answer because he wasn't a lawyer, but surely the systematic fleecing of viewers in a series of phone-in con-tricks comes close.
Yet, astonishingly, no one at ITV is to be sacked or suspended – even in the teeth of calls for a police investigation. At the very least, Grade is guilty of double standards. He didn't hesitate to suspend the independent production house RDF following the "Crowngate affair" before an inquiry had even got underway, thereby wiping millions off its share price. Yet he now seems bent on overlooking serious abuses at ITV.
ITV and other parts of the television industry are in deep trouble, not because they are over commercialised, but because they are not commercialised enough. They want the money that comes from running a retail business, but haven't taken on board the responsibility that goes with it.
Charles Allen, who headed ITV over the period of the scandal, came from a catering background. He wouldn't have tolerated the systematic spitting in soup at Little Chef, or replacing Blue Nun with antifreeze. Yet, captured by the glitz of television, he sanctioned a culture in which contempt for the customer took hold. Grade's feeble excuse that it was difficult to sack anyone because the blame is so widespread seems extraordinary: there was widespread blame at Enron, but it didn't stop executives there from being prosecuted.
The problem may be Grade's heritage: he comes from a great showbiz dynasty where the chaos behind the curtain was irrelevant so long as you put on a good show. The decision to invite the audience backstage changed all that. It's no longer show business, it is just business, and it's time TV executives wised up to the fact.
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